RSS Reader Web Control

Introduction

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds are becoming very popular these days. People need Country News at their own commercial websites. Today the most powerful websites are being developed in ASP.NET due to the fact that ASP.NET provides Web Controls that enable the Software Reuse property of Software Engineering Models. RSS Reader Control may be just dragged and dropped on web forms, can be linked to an RSS Feed and it will display a smooth, cool, and scrolling interface to the Feeds.

Background

The main power behind creation of such feeds is XML (Extensible Markup Language). XML is a structured language, thus provides support for the structured sharing of data. XML documents are built under a specific format. An example of such a document is as follows:

RSS Feeds work in the same way. Today News Agencies update a specific document on a daily basis. The same document is provided an interface in the websites. So the websites always have the latest contents of news. Obviously the creation of such documents is not easy as far as their property of being case-sensitive is concerned. Today, there are many XML editors available in the market. The structure of RSS Feeds is a standard and is unique around the world. A sample RSS Feed looks like this:

RSS Reader provides an interface to such a document. It extracts the XML from the specific documents, implies the scrolling effects to the contents read.

Using the Code

To use RSS Reader, you will need to add RSS Reader to your tool box by locating the RSSReader.dll. Once RSS Reader is in your tool box, you will need to drag it to the page. You will also need to provide the URL where to fetch news from. Different CSS classes may also be applied for a good interface of the control. Since the header, content area, and footer are purely editable and styleable, you will have the option to design the control to your requirements and likings. The list of properties is as follows:

HeaderText: The Text to appear as the control title, e.g. Country News

HeaderCssClass: The CSS Class to apply on Header

RSSHeading: The Text to appear as heading for the news inside the control, e.g. News

Points of Interest

Since the XML document is the data source for the control, it should be in the standard format, so that the control is able to read the contents. The Case Sensitivity of XML may also be of a great concern.

Comments and Discussions

Awesome job with the custom control! It'll be great if you can send me/post the source code.

1. I need to modify the marquee behavior.2. In case the control doesn't work correct for some specific content, I would like to be able to debug through the process and figure out what/why the issue occurred.

Without the source code this project is an absolute waste of time and is less than useless.

The reason people use this site and upload the source code is so that others can learn from it, improve it and then upload it again - thus creating a train of good code. Secondly, if you are unwilling to release the source code, but give out the dll.. (On this site) it appears that you have something malicious in the code.. Why else would you not release it here?

If your intention was to showcase your code, try asp.net. This site is more of a community based user group. I for one do not use ANY code without compiling the source code myself. When I create sites for customers it is absolutely required that I know what code is in the application.

Just a waste of everyone's time to post about a solution and not include the source code.. You get the lowest rating possible.

Two reasons I (and possibly other readers) would want the source code:1, so I can learn from it. As I understand it, Code Project is essentially about sharing code rather than showcasing controls. In any case, that's why I come to the site.2, because if I use it I very likely would want to change it. For example I think you hard-coded the width of the control which means to use it I'd have to fit my web page around it.

I and other readers can of course decompile the source code to get it, but why make us go through the extra step?

Q: Is it possible to change the default width of the control? I have tried the "width" method it is not working. The text "More info.." can this be changed to something else? I do not want a border style on the control! How to disable?